Disclaimer: I don't own Sword Art Online, or any of the characters or designs associated with it.

Kayaba Akihiko relaxed in his well worn, dark leather chair, that squeaked every time he leant back on it. His female assistant, Koujiro Rinko, would often speak her distaste of it. Kayaba liked to call it his "throne". A rather fitting name, he thought, for what he had in mind.

Koujiro was waiting for the day she could burn it.

Kayaba was currently immersed within his countless computer screens, screens that, although he has lived so much of his life staring at, would soon become obsolete.

At least, that was the plan. Nerve Gear was on the brink of becoming immersed and essential to the population. Of course, Nerve Gear had been out for a while. It's just that no one had yet to achieve its full potential. Kayaba mused, not even he had.

His chair squeaked as he leant back and sighed. He would never be around to witness the growth of Nerve Gear. That he was certain of. He had personally ensured his own demise.

But Kayaba had to ensure that Nerve Gear would prosper after he was gone. He was sure that after his little stunt he was about to pull, The Japanese would more or less illegalize Nerve Gear. What Kayaba needed were more foundations, more pillars of support, so that even if one country illegalized Nerve Gear, others might maintain it.

Kayaba's eyes flickered to the monitor to his right as a new message icon appeared. He smirked, speak of the devil. Nigel Newcombe, his connection in Australia, has sent him a message confirming the installation of the program. Kayaba had agreed with Nigel when he suggested confining the Nerve Gears to a single city, in particular, Melbourne, an incredibly diverse city of many different ethnic groups. Nigel's reasoning was that when the… accident happened, it would be a simpler, and more plausible task ensuring the safety of the participants. Nigel's argument had been,

"Bloody hell mate, do you really want me to trek across a whole fucking desert and one big fucking rock for that one poor bloke who'll end up in the middle of fuck knows where?"

Kayaba had not laughed. He was not the laughing type. But he did smile. Slightly. If you can consider the twitch at the end of his lips a smile. Koujiro would have told you that it was just the cold. She could have been right.

She was probably right.

The chair squeaked again, but this time Kayaba was sighing in relief. With the confirmation of Australia, Kayaba had confirmed that all 6 pillars of Nerve Gear had been established. All pillars would be separated from one another completely, with no form of contact whatsoever. He did not want communication between the different worlds at all.

Kayaba hummed tunelessly to himself. Everything was running on schedule. His chair squeaked one last time as he stood up from it. He turned off his monitors, and picked up his small travel bag. He looked longingly at his chair. He highly considered taking it with him to his small cottage, but thought better of it.

He was going to have a much more magnificent throne soon.

Kayaba Akihiko smiled.

Sword Art Online was scheduled for release in 24 hours.

The cold Melbourne wind whipped through the open window, and brusquely awoke me, Richard Bright, from my daze. I shivered from the winter wind that had nipped me awake, and returned my gaze to the front the classroom. My eyes lazily peeled open, revealing light gray eyes, filled with exhaustion, and tinted with blue. I yawned, and glanced down at my watch. Ten more minutes, and I would be free, free from the hierarchy of teachers and school advisors.

I ran my hand through my short cropped, dirty blond hair, and once I had confirmed that the hair at my front was pushed up, and in moderately good looking condition, I glanced around the room. My long slender fingers tapped at the desk in a rhythmical pattern, as I looked, once again, for my friend, Matthew, who was absent.

I sighed and rubbed my hand against my jaw, feeling the rough, unshaven, chinstrap styled facial hair I had been experimenting with. Along with my short hair, I thought it looked great. Not up to the expectations of a model, I mused, but not bad at all. I yawned again, as my concentration faded, and I once more began to doze off.

I was in my last year of high school, and at 18 years old, had lost almost all motivation to simply care what happened in school anymore.

I was quickly awakened to the world again as the teacher threw my test paper down on my table. I glanced at the results, 84/100. I smiled briefly. I wasn't the smartest student in my class, but I was definitely near the top. I looked around at a few other students, who I wouldn't necessarily call friends, more like acquaintances, and they gave me thumbs up.

I was certain that they would have scored higher than me; I had helped teach them half the concepts on this test. I was notorious for being a great teacher on almost all subjects. Except history, people practically ran in fear when I begun to talk about history, lest they hear a version more closely related to a fairy tail than real life.

My classmates often joked about how "Richard the teacher's"'grades were often worse than the grade of those that I taught. I sighed, I understood the concepts better than most, and could explain them in a way that made sense to a 12 year old, but when it came to putting those concepts to practice...

I would make miniscule errors, plug in the wrong values at different places, or mix up the first and the second. My friend Matthew often told me it was because I handed out all my luck freely to everyone else, and left myself with nothing but my own bad luck.

I preferred this explanation. I'd rather I have bad luck, and everyone else have good luck, then vice versa.

The bell rang, and I stood up, crumpled the test into my backpack, swung my leather jacket around myself and stood up, stretching my legs and pushing the limitations that my current worn out jeans presented me with. I briskly walked out of the room, but made sure to duck my head before going through the door. Being 6'4, just over 190 cm, came with its benefits and disadvantaged.

Me, and my head, definitely had a problem with doors, and it had yet to be resolved, despite our countless physical encounters.

As I begun to walk down the stairs to the ground level, I felt an impact against my back, and struggled to not fall down the stairs.

"Richarrdddd!" Rebecca shouted, gaining more than a few glances from the surrounding students. I tried not to laugh, and instead act sternly and disappointed, despite enjoying the rather pleasant feeling her large chest was leaving on my back.

"We've been over this Rebecca," I exclaimed "Your boyfriend isn't very ah… particular to these kind of actions"

"Oh, what he doesn't know won't hurt", she said laughing, while her chest length, dark chestnut hair flew across my face as she swung her head around.

"Speak of the devil," I said smirking, as I spied a black haired individual walking up the stairs. Here you go Daniel, I though to myself. I leaned forward slightly, swung Rebecca over my back, and held her in my arms against my chest, unknowingly hitting her against several annoyed passer-bys in the process.

Rebecca giggled, and was about to say something, probably flirtatious, before she was interrupted by hew own scream as she was launched out of my arms and into the surprised body of Daniel, who managed to catch her despite his shock.

"Control that damn woman, Daniel," I shouted.

"Me control her? I barely caught her that time, control yourself!"

"It's not my fault she weighs that much!"

Rebecca begun staring daggers at me, and if she were not currently entangled within Daniels arms, she would have punched me so hard my soul would have trembled. Instead, she gave me one last death glare, which assured me that my punishment would arrive later, and proceeded to beat up Daniel, the only person within her reach.

I laughed as I hopped down the stairs and around the flirtatious couple.

"I'll see you tomorrow," I shouted at them, rushing off so I could find Matthew.

They both looked at each other and smirked. "You'd be surprised honey," shouted Rebecca, "Yeah, you bumb ditch" Daniel continued.

"Oh shut up you damn romantic."

Daniel and I laughed at our friendly banter, before proceeding to head off in our separate directions.

I left the school building, and proceeded to make my way across the campus, making small talk with various groups of people along the way. I didn't have many people I would consider "friends", but I was a social enough person that I seemed to be able to get along with everyone at my school.

All in all, my life was rather perfect at this point in time.

I met Matthew at his apartment, which was relatively close to mine. He was Caucasian, his mother Chinese, and his dad from America, and for some reason, probably because of his Dad's business, was living in Melbourne, Australia. He was tall, at least 6 foot, but still short compared to me. He had hazel eyes, and average length messy black hair that refused to stay put. He opened the door for me wearing a loose collared shirt with black pants, looking very much like a businessman.

"Richard," he shouted loudly.

"Matthew." I shouted back, used to this noisy routine.

We clasped hands quickly, before rushing inside to observe his findings.

"So, you got it right", I asked excitedly.

"Damn right I did" he responded, pointed at three unopened boxes, and one opened box, which had wires and instruction pamphlets spooling out if it. The most impressive however was the sleek metallic helmet that was resting on Matthews pillow. It was smooth to touch, flawless, as if it could harbor no faults or dangers.

Matthew and I looked at each other, smiled, and nodded appreciatively, both understanding exactly what the other was thinking.

We couldn't wait to put on the helmet, and play the limited edition release game, Sword Art Online (SAO).

"So how was the line" I asked him, "For the Nerve Gear"

"It was awesome man, I mean, the babes were everywhere, it was just… you had to be there man." He said shaking his head. I was surprised that there had been "babes" there at all, considering the line was for a video game console. But, I guess video games do attract people of all aspects. Especially a video game as advanced and detailed as SAO was supposed to be.

"Here's the notes I took for you while you were off buying the game", I explained, handing him a file of papers, "and here's the money for buying SAO and the Nerve Gear for me", as I handed a substantially large amount over. I prayed that the game would not let me down after I had invested this much money into it.

"Thanks man, thanks", he said, happily accepting the money, while tossing the notes on the ground mercilessly. He picked up a box from the pile of three, and handed it to me.

"Who are the other boxes for?" I asked, curious as to whom it could be.

"That's for me to know, and for you to find out," he said smirking. "Now hurry up and set up man, opening starts in one hour".

The Nerve Gear was all set up at my place within 40 minutes, and SAO had just finished installing as I brought my dinner up to my room, re-heated curry from last nights dinner, and freshly cooked rice from a rice cooker, an invention almost as significant and world changing as cup noodles. Almost. My parents wouldn't be back tonight until late as they were at some sort of fancy ball, but I didn't mind. Although I loved being around them, tonight, I wanted to be able to play SAO without any interruptions.

As I started spooning the curry into my mouth with one hand, I examined the Nerve Gear with my other. I had previously done the calibrations for my body. With a sensor in each hand, I was asked to touch various parts of my body. The machine was very accurate, expertly determining my height.

It made me wonder however, why this was necessary, as almost everyone would be customizing an avatar that would have different heights and proportions to their real body. That was one of the most invigorating parts of SAO, the ability to create a brand new persona that you don't just control from a computer, but lived in, and fought as.

The Nerve Gear was currently not attached to any power outsource, however, it has been previously charged for the good part of an hour, and the battery life was already significantly charged, with a surprisingly long life time. The Nerve Gear was definitely an example of mankind's most advanced technology.

I finished the last of my curry and proceeded to down my glass of water. I pulled off my shirt, slipped my belt off, but kept my jeans on, and rolled onto my bed. My fingers grasped the smooth edge of the Nerve Gear, and I slid it over my head. I shivered as the cold metal touched my cheek and ears. I never thought that the Nerve Gear would feel so… imprisoning.

It was fine though, soon I would be off to a brand new world, and if I truly had the time to reminisce about the real world while absorbed in SAO…

Then it would have to be a pretty horrid game.

In the near future, as I look back to this moment, I found it rather depressing that the last phrase that I would probably ever speak out of my real body was…

"Link Start!"

Done, well, the prelude at least. I doubt I'll get any reviews this early, and if I do, they'll probably complain about how boring this is, and how boring the characters are. I might as well tell you now, all characters will be OC, Sorry :( I'm sure I love the original cast just as much as you guys do, but I honestly feel like the original story has just been told too many times, and it needs a break from Kirito being… well… plain awesome.

All I ask is that you hang around. I aim to go through the journey of SAO pretty slowly, unlike in the anime and light novels, where they jump through years at some points… That annoyed me to no end.

Anyway, hang around; next week will hopefully be more interesting.

Cheers

-Council